American Horror Story

Pilot: American Horror Story came out of nowhere. Until the day the pilot was out, I didn’t have any detailed information about it. When foreign horror websites wrote about it, I didn’t pay attention to the articles because the title made be expect some kind of documentary (like, Nightmares in Red, White and Blue: The Evolution of the American Horror Film). Under these circumstances, I didn’t have time to get sufficiently excited and maybe that’s why I liked the pilot more than if I’d been expecting something great. So far, it feels like Twin Peaks in a B-movie package. The cold opening is fantastically scary and the rest of the episode is entertainingly unsettling. I’m very curious about what aces the creators have up their sleeves, because stretching a haunted house story to the length of a TV series won’t be easy. There are two things that bother me: the character of Ben and that the scenes don’t link with each other very well – I’ve no idea whether the first episode takes place during a week, a month, or even more… The rating is provisional, I feel that with the remaining episodes the series can either drop to three or go up to five :) 1st season: So, it held to four. I liked the interesting characters and the story as a whole, which exploited everything it could out of the trodden premise of a haunted house, especially considering it is a twelve-episode series. If there’s one thing to complain about is that we didn’t get that many horror moments. But thumbs up. The last episode was a beautiful farewell to the characters and I’m looking forward to the second season, which will be about something completely different. (08/10/2011)

The beginning was great, somewhere around the middle I lost interest, but I finished the second half of Hotel, and I’m satisfied. For me, in fact the second best season of AHS (after Asylum). It helped a lot that Jessica Lange took a break (in the last seasons she was playing always the same character and it was boring already), and instead of her, Lady Gaga brought her own special aura. Hopefully, Murphy won’t make the same mistake and won’t let us pass the next season, like Jessica. I would also bring in some positive characters, though I could develop a taste for this panopticon of eccentricity. (18/01/2016)

Do we finally have an American Horror Story with main characters anchored in reality and with positive attributes, instead of only psychopaths, murderers, ghosts and perverts? Do we finally have an American Horror Story that’s not only bloody and twisted, but truly atmospheric and scary? Do we finally have someone to root for? The first episode is very interesting and hopefully things will hold and won’t become the classic circus of the bizarre where anything can happen to anyone, because this movie universe has nothing in common with reality. The documentary format was surprising, but I have nothing against it, it gives some background to the characters and it makes you believe that they won’t become psychopaths in the next episode. I’m very satisfied so far, and I hope that the current trend will continue and that Murphy will not overstuff it as usual. (20/09/2016)

The atmosphere is still holding, but based on past experiences I’m beginning to wonder whether the creators haven’t crammed too many motifs again. After the second episode, we already have some of ritualistic sect, a pastoral god (or whatever the fuck was that), the ghosts of the sisters and the (un)imaginary friend. That’s still OK, but I hope it won’t grow. The logic of the characters’ behaviour is borderline (the documentary segments explain the contradictory decisions in a way that somehow make sense). (23/09/2016)

That twist, or rather, the way second half of the season was a total shift from the first half, is fantastic. But it would have been even better if the moron of Ryan Murphy hadn’t already announced it in the first episode through his PR interviews. When you know something should be coming, you figure out quite easily what the basic joke is about. Not that this was any major mindfuck, either. (In this sense, I prefer the alternative twist I made up, where I expected that the real Matt and Shelby had actually died and the filmmakers where interviewing their ghosts on the grounds of that accursed place.) So, the level of surprise of the sixth episode was a bit lower than I had hoped, but I adored the execution. I had a lot of fun with the interactions between diverse characters and, mainly thanks to that, I think it would’ve been no problem if the twist had come an episode or two earlier. The oppressive atmosphere could have held for a long time. The five stars are not for the spookiness (because in this regard, the sixth episode was rather an intermezzo), but for the playfully and convincingly executed concept. (20/10/2016)

The way the creators fucked up (sorry, there’s no other way to put it) such an excellent concept in the last episodes should be considered a crime. So, once again we have a bunch of unlikeable and stupid characters whom you don’t give a toss about, and we only wait until they’ll be massacred. Great. At least there’s only one episode left. (10/11/2016)